


nihility

by seventhstar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Revenge, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 02:15:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20845877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: Viktor’s gallery isn’t only a gallery, of course. Viktor isn’t just a painter; he’s an art thief and the shows at art galleries, as far as Yuuri can tell, are a covert way to fence his stolen goods. Then again, Yuuri isn’t security for an air filtration company, either; he’s an intelligence agent from an international espionage unit.That’s the truth. But Viktor’s hand in his is true, too; Viktor’s soft smudged portraits of Yuuri done in the margins of grocery lists and on the backs of bills are true; the way Yuuri feels about Viktor, like something warm and comforting has taken up residence in all the chambers of his heart, is true.Someday he’ll tell Viktor everything.





	nihility

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tags. This is not a happy fic.

** <strike> 1 </strike> **

Spain is fruitless—Yuuri scales the side of a building, breaks into an office, and has to pretend to be an alcoholic who’s found God in the space of an afternoon—with every source turning up nothing, with every lead going cold. If ISU is operating here, they’re doing it silently. _Or maybe,_ Yuuri thinks,_ I’m in the wrong place. Again._

They could be anywhere. They recruit spies from existing agencies, after all—good agents who go rogue, then vanish off the grid, only to reappear as turncoats. Yuuri’s been on the hunt for two long years, and never even gotten close.

“Another dead end,” Chris says as they check their suitcases in their hotel room. Chris is Yuuri’s new partner. They’ve been working together for over a year now, though, and Yuuri shouldn’t really think of him as _new_ anymore. Yuuri’s the one who transferred out of Phichit’s unit; he can’t hold it against Chris that the two of them don’t have the same rapport. “Though I did notice you bought jewelry…maybe for a special someone?”

“It’s not…”

“Isn’t it?” Chris’s expression turns serious as he closes his suitcase. “You have to report it soon. You live together and you’re engaged. And while I’m sure the higher ups don’t care about you fornicating—”

Yuuri blushes, despite himself. It’s only been six months, but he’s fallen in love. He hasn’t asked Viktor yet, but he’s reasonably certain Viktor will say yes. Viktor is very romantic; he writes Yuuri love letters that he mails to their apartment from the post office down the road and that he hides behind paintings and under furniture for Yuuri to discover.

“—they will care about you having a covert relationship.”

“I know.”

If someone had asked him last year what rules Yuuri was least likely to break, the ones regarding personal relationships would have been at the top of his list. But that was before he met Viktor. And there’s a chance Viktor won’t pass the security checks…which is why Yuuri hasn’t asked him to try. Yet.

It’s a relief to step off the plane onto the tarmac, and not just because he’s safe from Chris’s prying. It’s an even bigger relief when he arrives at his building and sees one of the apartment windows is open. Viktor is home. Yuuri can ask him now. He palms the ring box in his pocket as he opens the door.

“Vitya?”

No answer. Just a pitiful whining noise. _Makkachin,_ Yuuri thinks, and sighs. Viktor is so irresponsible sometimes. If he’s left out food where Makkachin can steal it again, Yuuri is going to lose it.

“Vitya!” There’s no one in the living room or kitchen. No one in the bathroom. The bedroom door is ajar.

_Probably stayed up all night painting and fell asleep at six am again,_ Yuuri thinks, smiling.

He steps into the bedroom.

Sometime later, he finds Makkachin under the bed, blood soaked into her snout. She’s whimpering. The gunshot would have scared her; she’s an old dog, she doesn’t like loud noises. Yuuri leads her out into the living room, after he’s identified the body. He thinks he called it in at some point. He thinks maybe he’s still asleep and this is a nightmare.

He thinks maybe he died on his last op and this is hell.

Someone from the agency debriefs him eventually.

“He didn’t know anything,” Yuuri says. They ask him more questions. Yuuri thinks he’s answering; everything sounds like it’s underwater.

“Yuuri?” It’s Phichit. Phichit is supposed to be in Bangkok right now. Yuuri wonders why he’s here. “They’re going to take the—to the medical examiner. Is there…do you want to…”

It’s hard to get up. All his limbs feel like lead. But Yuuri goes back into the bedroom, and kneels down on the floor. The carpet’s already been stripped away by forensics. _Viktor will hate that_, he thinks, _this was expensive._

He takes out the rings. They’re cold. One of them will always be cold now. It fits perfectly on Viktor’s finger. The other one he puts on his own. It fits, too.

Phichit puts a hand on his shoulder.

“They shot him in the face,” Yuuri says dumbly. Viktor’s hair is still in the ponytail he wears when painting. There’s paint and blood and brain matter in it. “He’s going to be so mad. He spends half his money on importing face cream from Korea.” He brushes a single strand away from what’s left of Viktor’s forehead. “I need to search the room.”

The lead agent on the investigation doesn’t want Yuuri to touch anything, but Phichit talks them into it somehow. Yuuri goes systematically through all the obvious places, finding nothing but paintbrushes and palettes, until the agent supervising gets bored and turns away.

Then Yuuri opens the secret compartment, the one Viktor didn’t know Yuuri knew about, concealed expertly on the underside of an end table. Inside is a postcard. On the front is a painting done by Viktor, and on the back, drawn in charcoal, is the six ring symbol of ISU and today’s date.

_They used his art supplies,_ Yuuri thinks, and a tsunami of rage drowns all his grief. _They went through his stuff—they desecrated his art—_

The postcard slips out of his shaking hand. When Yuuri retrieves it, the charcoal is flecked with blood.

** <strike> 2 </strike> **

_“I don’t understand why an air filter company needs armed security,” Viktor whines. He’s at the vanity brushing sparkly powder over his cheeks. “Are you sure this is a work trip? You’re not trading me in for a hot blonde, are you?”_

_“Vitya, you are a hot blonde.”_

_Viktor laughs. “What do you think?” He slips off the robe he’s wearing now that his makeup is done and turns around._

_He’s in a long red dress, the skirt in fringe that sways daringly around Viktor’s legs, with heart-shaped cutouts that emphasize the absolute perfection of Viktor’s body. It would take a lot of effort for Yuuri to not stare at the way the fabric is drawn taut over Viktor’s visibly erect nipples, so he doesn’t bother to expend it. He just stares, pointedly, until Viktor gives in and comes over to drape himself in Yuuri’s arms._

_“You’re wrinkling my suit,” Yuuri mumbles. _

_“Your suit is ugly.”_

_“This is Armani.”_

_“It’s two year old Armani.”_

_Yuuri sighs. He and Viktor kiss, slowly, Viktor’s long hair brushing Yuuri’s cheek. _

_“Come back soon?”_

_“Always,” Yuuri promises. He drinks in the look in Viktor’s eyes, which are blue and precise; Viktor brushes wayward hair away from Yuuri’s forehead. “Have fun at your gallery opening, okay?”_

_Viktor’s gallery isn’t only a gallery, of course. Viktor isn’t just a painter; he’s an art thief and the shows at art galleries, as far as Yuuri can tell, are a covert way to fence his stolen goods. Then again, Yuuri isn’t security for an air filtration company, either; he’s an intelligence agent from an international espionage unit._

_That’s the truth. But Viktor’s hand in his is true, too; Viktor’s soft smudged portraits of Yuuri done in the margins of grocery lists and on the backs of bills are true; the way Yuuri feels about Viktor, like something warm and comforting has taken up residence in all the chambers of his heart, is true._

_Someday he’ll tell Viktor everything. _

_Thirty minutes later, Yuuri is in a cab on his way to the airport. Viktor texts him to tell Yuuri ‘I love you.’_

_Yuuri texts back: ‘I love you, too.’_

** <strike> 3 </strike> **

Chris is the one who turns up to help him.

Yuuri never asked Chris for anything. He went to Phichit, who gently told him that it wasn’t worth it, that Viktor wouldn’t have wanted it. He’s wrong; Viktor was both vindictive and petty. He went to Celestino, who nodded and smiled and told him that he was suspended until further notice, and here was the number of the agency grief counselor. But Celestino’s wrong. The last thing Yuuri needs to do is come to terms to what happened, to make it acceptable in his mind. So Yuuri nods and feigns tears, packs a bag, and flees the country with the fake passport with his photograph in it that he finds hidden underneath a floorboard in their living room.

(What had Viktor planned to do with that? Yuuri will never know now.)

“You haven’t thought this through.”

“I need to know.”

“There’s no evidence this was anything but a random attack, Yuuri. The agency is closing the investigation.”

“I need to know,” Yuuri repeats.

“I’ll do my best,” Chris says. “Don’t get caught.”

** <strike> 4 </strike> **

He tries to read the autopsy report. He gets as far as the description of the charcoal stains on Viktor’s fingers before he throws up.

** <strike> 5 </strike> **

The only thing Yuuri knows for certain about the ISU is that they take rogue agents. So Yuuri goes rogue. He sells Japanese state secrets in one country for money to fund his renegade operations. He uses the money to buy a cache of weapons to set himself up as an arms dealer in another. He installs himself in a concrete and rebar bunker in a war zone, lets a few mercenaries lowball him to give himself a reputation and drive in business, and waits.

One of his customers is a rogue agent; Yuuri catches him. Interrogates him. Learns nothing. He sells what’s left of him to a foreign power willing to pay; he wastes an afternoon bleaching the floors and the walls. The smell lingers. Yuuri learns to live with it; it’s easier than he thinks. It doesn’t keep him awake at night, though he’s vaguely aware that it should.

(At night all Yuuri sees is Viktor’s face.)

The money funds the parts of Yuuri’s investigation that he can’t do himself; they let him compile files on every person Viktor met in the weeks before his death, every client he had, everyone from the artist whose show he was arranging to his money launderer to the woman who styled his hair and did his brows. None of them have any connections to ISU that Yuuri can find, just a tangle of art theft and Swiss accounts and Russian mob ties. When he runs out of people to investigate, Yuuri goes back to the beginning of the list and starts over. When he reaches the limits of his criminal network, he goes back to Chris, who does his best, though it’s impossible for him to give Yuuri everything Yuuri needs.

(Chris doesn’t know about the postcard. No one knows about the postcard.)

In the hours when he’s not working, when he’s too tired to work and too numb to sleep, Yuuri opens the file. He lays out the blueprint of his apartment, the printout of Viktor’s schedule stolen from the gallery before Yuuri fled, the pilfered pages of reports about ISU Chris gives him. He goes over the meager handful of facts he has, over and over and over and over. Viktor had been gone an hour when Yuuri found him. The forensic evidence is scant and inconclusive. There was no sign of forced entry. There was no one suspicious on the security camera footage. There was no way into the apartment besides the front door: Yuuri had made sure of that by greasing handholds around the windows, by installing steel plating in the walls, by stealing his landlord’s copy of their keys.

And when Yuuri does sleep—

** <strike> 6 </strike> **

_“Hello.”_

_There’s a man standing next to him, admiring the painting Yuuri has been pretending to be enthralled by for the past five minutes. He wasn’t there a moment ago; a part of Yuuri absently confirms that he’s not between Yuuri and the exit, and checks him for any poorly concealed weapons. The rest of Yuuri just checks him out, period. He’s gorgeous—blue eyes, long pale hair, ink and paint stains on his fingers._

_“Do I know you?”_

_“Would you like to?” The man has an accent—Russian, probably genuine—and a wide smile. “I’m the curator here, if you’re interested in purchasing this piece.”_

_One of these pieces, in theory, contains a cipher that will let the agency decode a series of encrypted messages regarding what might be ISU’s operations. The problem is, no one has been able to figure out which one it is. So Yuuri is here to stake out the gallery and maybe break into the curator’s office as needed. He’s not thrilled about it._

_“And if I’m not interested in purchasing this piece?”_

_“I’m sure we have something to your tastes.”_

I’m sure you do, _Yuuri thinks. He glances down the curator’s body, at the sharp lines of his grey suit, at the expensive Italian shoes. The man is too well dressed to be a government agent._

_“What did you have in mind?”_

_Pretty Russian Curator’s name is Viktor Nikiforov, and the gallery is his. He takes Yuuri through what must be an overly thorough tour; Yuuri sees other clients and on one occasion a growly, elderly Russian man give Viktor sharp looks when two hours becomes three and Viktor is still giving Yuuri the life story of every piece on display. He keeps touching Yuuri—leading him by the elbow, resting a hand on the small of his back, brushing stray hairs off Yuuri’s forehead._

_Yuuri’s hair is securely gelled back. There _are_ no stray hairs. _

_“Well?” Viktor asks, when the hour is late and he’s run out of excuses to keep Yuuri from leaving—not that Yuuri has tried very hard to go. “Did anything catch your eye?”_

_The mission is an abject failure. Yuuri never finds the painting; Viktor is consolation enough._

** <strike> 7 </strike> **

—he wishes he hadn’t. Dreaming of Viktor is the only time Yuuri feels. He would give anything to make it stop.

It’s Christmas. A year has passed, a long pale year where all the days blurred together and the knowledge that Viktor remained unavenged lay in Yuuri’s stomach like a lodged bullet. They trained him not to lose himself when he was undercover, but Yuuki Suzuki, scumbag criminal, is like a thin layer of grime on his skin. The longer it remains, the less it feels like dirt; the longer it remains, the more Yuuri’s desire to wash it away fades.

Someday everything about him that Viktor loved will be gone.

** <strike> 8 </strike> **

What had Viktor thought, as he drew his last on the back of that postcard? Had he chosen that piece on purpose, or had he simply seized whatever was at hand? There was a larger version of the painting, Yuuri remembers, that had hung in the gallery for a few weeks before being sold. Viktor had drawn a portrait of Yuuri with a few filthy lines scrawled below it, and slipped it behind the painting for Yuuri to find while Viktor was away.

Yuuri lies there, cold and still, and remembers. It had been _behind the painting of St. Petersburg._

The painting was sold to a hotel a few blocks from where they’d lived. It hangs in a room on the fifth floor. Yuuri swaps it out with a painting of a sailboat and carries it to another hotel room, in a different city. He slips the back off of the frame. There is another painting there, concealed beneath the cardboard, a depiction of a frenzied battle between Heaven and Hell. The figures are so small Yuuri has to use a magnifying glass to see them. Among the demons Yuuri sees himself, a pale-haired figure that must be a younger Viktor, the old man Viktor had worked with at the gallery, a boy wearing a tiger skin with green eyes. Among the angels are Celestino and Phichit, and the tech who’d taken prints of the apartment after, and three agents of other agencies that had worked with Yuuri’s unit in the past three years. And Chris.

Each of the angels is wearing six rings.

** <strike> 9 </strike> **

Once Yuuri has compared the painting to the list of Viktor’s clients and associates, and cross-referenced with all the agency personnel he knows, he’s identified about two thirds of the faces in the painting. The rest he sets aside for later; they’ll have to come to him eventually. The size and scope of ISU, to pretend to be a legitimate intelligence agency and then to cover that up by hunting a fictional version of themselves, must be enormous.

It’s not enough to just kill them. Yuuri could kill every person in the painting and not make a dent. Only total annihilation is sufficient.

He’ll need more information about ISU’s operations, its members, where they are, how they do things. He’ll need to know where they keep their money and how they hide their illegitimate activities. He’ll need to know what Viktor knew and how Viktor knew it. Then he’ll have to eliminate ISU, thread by thread, until the web collapses entirely. He’ll have to lie and cheat and kill and steal his way to the end.

The old Yuuri would have balked at such extreme measures. The new Yuuri has no such qualms. He’s already lived through the end of his world.

** <strike> 10 </strike> **

Viktor was born Viktor Feltsman in 1988 in Moscow. His life was unremarkable until the deaths of his parents, six months apart, at age thirteen. As far as Yuuri can tell; 2001 is the first year he finds any relevant records. He was taken in by the man who would become Yakov Feltsman, who Yuuri thinks must have been the one to teach Viktor to steal. There are arrest records, which grow fewer and fewer as Viktor grows up. And after he turns seventeen, Viktor drops out of school (Yuuri finds the roster without Viktor’s name on it) and disappears.

The agent who recruited him tells Yuuri—reluctantly—about the ISU recruitment process: the underbelly of criminals and mercenaries, the veneer of legitimacy provided by real, oblivious agents like Yuuri. He tells him about the hallucinogens they give to test new recruits’ resolve, the saboteurs they plant to test them.

(Yuuri collects the locations of black sites where the training occurs.)

Viktor’s first handler—less reluctantly, because word is starting to spread and he’s heard what Yuuri did to the first guy—tells him about the things they made Viktor steal. About the injuries Viktor sustained doing it. About the threats and promises they used to keep Viktor in line.

(Yuuri collects a list of of ISU operations: assassinations and arms deals and thefts and slaughters.)

The man sent to hunt Viktor down when Viktor finally broke and ran, a scant year and a half after recruitment—eagerly, because he wants his guts to stay inside his body—tells Yuuri about the cold places Viktor hid, the injury he sustained that left a mysterious scar Yuuri used to kiss, the note in Viktor’s file that said kill on sight long after they’d lost track of him.

(Yuuri collects the names of the people who run ISU, people with money and power and connections and everything to lose.)

The woman who ordered Viktor’s death isn’t expecting him. Maybe she thought she was too important to die. It takes him no time at all to break her, to get every sordid detail from her about what ISU does and why it exists—and then Yuuri leaves her alive. He wants her to suffer through the loss of everything she cares about.

Yuuri saves the best for last.

** <strike> 11 </strike> **

_“Yuuri, hold still.”_

_“I’m holding still.”_

_“Just a little longer, I want to get this while the light is good.”_

_“Can’t you just set up a lamp?” Yuuri teases._

_Viktor scoffs. He dabs at the canvas with a brush. “No, I cannot set up a lamp. A lamp does not adequately mimic the light of the setting sun.”_

_Yuuri’s fantasy of posing for a nude portrait was much sexier than the reality, which is uncomfortable and chilly. He’s lying on a sofa and the leather is sticking to his ass. Viktor insists that a cold studio keeps the subject awake. They were supposed to eat dinner an hour ago and by now the Chinese food is going to be lukewarm._

_“Remind me again why you need another naked painting of me?”_

_“Yuuri, if you don’t stop moving your nipples are going to be the wrong place.”_

_“Because you have two already.”_

_“Neither of them are right. You’re too beautiful.”_

_Viktor puts the paintbrush aside and wipes off his hands. He covers the canvas up with a white cloth. Yuuri is curious to see what it looks like, but he knows he won’t see it until it’s done, if he sees it at all. Sometimes when Viktor is unsatisfied with a painting he just destroys it. He starts to get off the stupid couch, but before he can Viktor comes to his side and climbs on top of him. His hair tickles Yuuri’s nose as he lies there. There’s wet paint on his shirt that Yuuri can feel smearing across his chest._

_“Where’d you learn to paint?”_

_“From my uncle. He was a painter.”_

_“Was he good?”_

_“Mm. He was never really successful. He had to get another job.” _

_Viktor sighs as Yuuri runs a hand down his back, fingers tangling in his ponytail, running down the line of Viktor’s spine. He smells like cologne and turpentine. It’s only been three months, Yuuri knows, but it feels like a lifetime has passed. As if Yuuri has been traveling and has just returned. As if Viktor’s arms are home._

_“I stopped painting for a while,” Viktor muses. “But then I met you.”_

_“You should keep painting.”_

_“Why?”_

_Yuuri holds him tighter. “Because it makes you happy.”_

** <strike> 12 </strike> **

“I wondered when you’d show up.” Chris sounds bored, even though he’s chained to a stake driven into the floor and has spent the last few hours drugged unconscious. “Hello, Katsuki.”

There are so many things Yuuri would like to ask. If Chris was on Viktor’s trail before Yuuri confided in him and gave him away. If Chris felt the slightest pang of guilt when he used the key Yuuri gave him for emergencies to let himself into the apartment and murder Viktor. If Viktor said anything to him at the end. If he said Yuuri’s name.

He understands, at last, that the truth will not free him. He asks nothing.

“You’ve been a busy boy.”

So Chris has heard. Yuuri’s been distributing all the information he has on ISU to their enemies, even ones that didn’t know they existed. Every strand of the web will be cut now. There’ll be nothing left.

“Look at me,” Yuuri says. He takes aim between Chris’s eyes. It’s Chris’s gun. “I want you to feel what he felt.”

“He was soft, you know,” Chris says. His eyes are cold; no remorse, no fear, just detachment. “That’s why he ran away. He couldn’t stomach violence.” He sighs. “He’d be devastated to see you do this.”

Viktor is beyond feeling anything, anymore. He’s dead. All that’s left is Yuuri and the endless pain.

Yuuri pulls the trigger.

** <strike> 13 </strike> **

After he’s disposed of the body, Yuuri finally sits down and cries. He misses Viktor so much.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
